Why is Timeless Isle so fondly remembered?

[TheWorkingTitle]

My experience is that of a 99% faction dominated server, so Timeless Isle was both incredible and highly toxic. Players had nowhere to hide. So all the while they're exploring this mysterious island discovering its nooks and crannies, meanwhile a war is being waged throughout between PvPers/Griefers and Carebear PvErs.

As the first Fire Watcher on the server, it was maybe the most fun I've ever had in the game. The battles, the rivalries, all the trolling and shenanigans. There were no lengths I wouldn't go to get my next Bloody Coin.

It was also novel in that it had tons of jumping puzzles and secrets. It boasted timed events, dailies, achievements, tons of vanity items and super useful items for the non-instanced world, 4 rotating world bosses with a secret area for legendary cloak wielders with another world boss, mounts, pets, the Celestial Tournament which was the first of its kind, and more.

Plus this was the most complete and fleshed out classes have ever been ability-wise -- before the Great Prune in WoD destroyed them -- so just the fact that classes were enjoyable and had vast tool kits made everything else about the game more fun as well.

I've got endless stories about my Firewatcher journey, what a time that was.

[Ermelloth]

Everybody just forgot the most important feature of TI.

Unlike Tanaan and all other similar zones, in TI you could keep hunting the rares entire day long, even if you got less coins from some of them.

Every other similar zone that followed - devs put a stupid restriction for some reason, so you could loot the same rare once per day or even once per week (Tanaan). Tanaan was especially bad cause of this - once you shot all the rares in the zone on Wednesday, there would be entire week of having nothing else to look for (if you got the reputations).

That's why TI is very superior to all that followed. You could actually hang there for hours long, farm and get that pet or toy in a more reliable way, unlike 1/1000000 chance to get it in the zones that followed cause of the loot restriction.

[Femininity]

Probably my least favorite part of Pandaland. Different strokes and whatnot.

[neik]

• Meaningful
• Packed with the action
• Epitome of beauty

It really felt like home and you could spend hours there because there was always something going, people always were up to some shenanigans, talking in the chat, killing the shark, the ship, doing events, world bosses. Such a great memories indeed. Thank you for reminding me op

[prwraith]

I'd say it was actually really poorly designed.

The entire upper area was only accessible by one ramp with bridges flanked by charging elites who would dismount you and swiftly beat you to a pulp if you were undergeared or at the very least require you to stop and fight. The "strat" back then was basically run your way up and then wait for someone else to aggro them before continuing on your way so you didn't have to deal with them. Basically everything west of the celestial court was devoid of anything to do, and that was probably a good fifth of the island.

Overall, the aesthetic was pretty dull and there was almost zero story integration in the zone outside of a sort of obtuse "collect rocks from rares, see a silent weekly cutscene explaining almost nothing." Outside of PVP, it's only real "use" was providing easy catch-up gear.

The place was a real grindy time-sink (especially the "kill a billion yak men" reputation grind.)


Throne of Thunder did it way better just the previous patch and Nazjatar and Mechagon were far superior to it.

If that was the only method you had to reach the top you were very clearly doing something wrong. Meteor toy aside, you had birds, glides etc. If you felt like running it was still super quick. Let's not be disingenuous and pretend the elites were a real thread to anyone

[Venziir]

Never been a fan of this rather odd attempt at Sandbox content, it just feels like random points of interest strewn across a zone.

For sure! And after Isle of Thunder it just seemed to pointless.

[The Stormbringer]

It was pretty decent, had good rewards and a variety of things to do, and allowed some quirky and fun stuff like the gliders and whatnot. Also, there were the loot tokens you could send to alts.

[D3athsting]

That trainwreck called bfa that came after timeless island made ppl evaluate TI a lot more than expected.

[FuxieDK]

Thematically it wasn't anything special, but it wasn't bad either, pleasantly grounded like the rest of pandaria. What i remember the most of it was the exploration and the many ways of it, like in the water, or gliding through the sky. And best of all! WPVP! Got like 3000 bloody coins from that place thanks to that red item, very fun times as a lock with many toys and items to glide and swim very very fast.

I think you remember wrong.

Timeless Island, Isle of Thunder, Tanaan Jungle and Mechagon Island are all remembered badly.. They were sloppy made, with little/no content and lasted waaaaaay too long.

[prwraith]

I think you remember wrong.

Timeless Island, Isle of Thunder, Tanaan Jungle and Mechagon Island are all remembered badly.. They were sloppy made, with little/no content and lasted waaaaaay too long.

Like almost all posts here that's your opinion. Everyone in my guild loved that shit

[rrayy]

I think you remember wrong.

Timeless Island, Isle of Thunder, Tanaan Jungle and Mechagon Island are all remembered badly.. They were sloppy made, with little/no content and lasted waaaaaay too long.

Your opinion, not fact. Lots of people loved that stuff. They aren't wrong for doing so.

[GreenJesus]

It was just an easy place to get tokens to send to your alts, fight 2 world bosses a week, and fool around in with bloody coins. It was cool how there was a natural power progression there. Your main can grind mobs on the other side of the bridge (watch out for the kilnmasters that one shot you) and your alts would grind the fire bison in the grass near where Huolon spawned.

[ellieg]

I thought it was cool killing random rares, farming currency, killing world bosses, and pvping all over the island as soon as u left the safe zone

[unbound]

Thematically it wasn't anything special, but it wasn't bad either, pleasantly grounded like the rest of pandaria. What i remember the most of it was the exploration and the many ways of it, like in the water, or gliding through the sky. And best of all! WPVP! Got like 3000 bloody coins from that place thanks to that red item, very fun times as a lock with many toys and items to glide and swim very very fast.

TBH, those zones get remembered fondly because many players were getting bored out of their minds running raids over and over again (for MoP) or raids and M+ repeatedly since Legion. Anything new was seen as a god-send by the majority.

Same was true for all the hastily thrown together zones at the end of the expansions since then.

[Varitok]

Timeless Isle was great because of density, activities, great alt catch-up. It was all around fun. There was a little something for everyone and especially great for collectors.

- - - Updated - - -

• Meaningful
• Packed with the action
• Epitome of beauty

It really felt like home and you could spend hours there because there was always something going, people always were up to some shenanigans, talking in the chat, killing the shark, the ship, doing events, world bosses. Such a great memories indeed. Thank you for reminding me op

This here. There was always something happening and due to density you always were chatting with one person or another as you waited or roamed the island. It was just genuinely laid back and nice, no massive time gates or stress. Just an overall good time to chill.

[mojusk]

[Echocho]

Burdens of Eternity and the world bosses. You could spend all week there and work your way towards a set of pretty good gear completely on your own schedule.

[luciano]

Thematically it wasn't anything special, but it wasn't bad either, pleasantly grounded like the rest of pandaria. What i remember the most of it was the exploration and the many ways of it, like in the water, or gliding through the sky. And best of all! WPVP! Got like 3000 bloody coins from that place thanks to that red item, very fun times as a lock with many toys and items to glide and swim very very fast.

I liked it at the time because the content was accessible (the elites were not hard to kill), most of the elites spawned frequently, every 15 minutes you could kill one of those 4 bosses in the square, the world boss was there and easy to group for, and most importantly, there were a ton of BOA gear drops that allowed my main to farm the place and gear up an army of alts.

It felt less like an island and more like a private club that we all had access to and playing it on one toon let you gear up all your others.

[Sondrelk]

Timeless isle did what all great patch zones need to do to be loved. It came at the very end of an expansion, giving little more than easy ways to gear up alts to do all the stuff that you would normally have wanted to do in the expansion, but didnt.

In MoP you had challenge mode dungeons, legendary cloaks, general stuff to collect. And the Timeless isle made it easy to let that stuff shine by giving easy loot so even your shitty freshly made alt could jump straight into Siege of Orgrimmar and get hideously overpowered.

The reason other zones like Mechagon fails to capture this despite having all of what Timeless isle had and more is that they were in the middle of an expansion, so yo ucannot capitalize on the end of expansion drought to give players a reason to simply idle around, especially not with extremely large buffs like what Timeless isle had.


As for specific things it did right I think it might have simply been how it struck a really ideal balance on enemy types, making it easy to get massively buffed, then pull large groups and generally have fun just being overpowered without quite getting to the point where stuff is trivial. Specifically in that case how this balance was favorable if you played alone, whereas areas like Mechagon has elite areas, but not spread out enough to make farming it hit that sweet spot between actual challenge and mindless grind.

[uuuhname]

I predominantly play melee classes so fighting the elites mobs was always fun. at least it was more engaging than farming the usual mobs.